Centre for Academic Practice, Trinity Teaching & Learning

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3-4 Foster Place
Dublin 2
Ireland

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academicpractice@tcd.ie

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a set of principles developed by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) that offers a framework for educators to meet diverse student needs and reduce barriers. UDL is about creating and implementing instruction that meets multiple learning needs, preferences and circumstances in order to ensure that all students have equitable access to learning. By frontloading inclusion in the design of courses and modules, UDL helps avoid the need for students to ask for individual accommodations. 

The three core principles of UDL are: Multiple Means of Engagement, Multiple Means of Representation, and Multiple Means of Action and Expression.

→ Click on the titles below to learn more about each of the UDL principles.

Our learners come with a huge diversity of life experiences and cultural backgrounds with a range of demands placed on them. Some questions that the Multiple Means of Engagement principle might help you to address are:

  • How can we help our learners to engage with their peers and the wider College community?
  • How can we stimulate the interest of our learners and motivate them to stay the course and finish the programmes we offer?
  • How can we ensure that learners feel that their contributions matter?

Providing Multiple Means of Engagement supports students to be:

  • purposeful and motivated
  • resourceful and knowledgeable
  • strategic and goal driven

In short, it is about empowering students to take charge of their own learning and broader College experience — and encouraging that experience to be meaningful, relevant and valuable. 

Multiple Means of Representation addresses the 'what of learning'. It relates to how students assimilate facts and ideas and understand and process information. It is about providing options for perception, language, symbols and comprehension.

Questions this principle can help you to answer:

  • How can we ensure that we are giving our learners what they need to understand the material we present?
  • How can we leverage multimedia, active learning and peer learning to retain attention and provide variety for our learners?
  • How can we scaffold students' use of technology to enhance their learning?

Our learners possess a huge variety of physical and cognitive abilities and differ widely in the ways that they organise and communicate information. Some questions that the Multiple Means of Action and Expression principle might help you to address are:

  • How can we give learners with a huge variety of skills and abilities equitable opportunities to demonstrate what they know?
  • How can we build students' fluency in different types of media and communication formats so that students are equipped to share their talents effectively in a media-rich world?
  • How can we help our learners to set and monitor goals and to plan effective strategies to reach them?

You can explore the UDL framework in more depth on the CAST website. If you are a staff member who is new to implementing UDL, we recommend exploring the resources on our Centre for Academic Practice website first to get an overview of UDL in the context of teaching and learning in Trinity.

The +1 Approach

For educators trying out their first UDL implementation, UDL consultant Dr Thomas J. Tobin recommends that for each topic being addressed, educators add one more option for engagement, one more option for representation, and one more option for action and expression. If you are unsure where to start, identify a ‘road block’ (a concept that students may struggle with or that generates many queries) and start there. Add options for students to engage with it, to understand it and to communicate what they know about it — and see how it goes.

Next steps

In the next section, we will look at some practical steps you can take to make your teaching materials more accessible for your students which will provide an important foundation for UDL approaches.